


JWP 2019 #4: Nothing So Good as a Good Book

by methylviolet10b



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (1984 TV)
Genre: Asexual Character, M/M, Prompt Fic, References to Literature, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 20:43:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19483654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b
Summary: Mrs Hudson has twice surprised Mr Holmes.





	JWP 2019 #4: Nothing So Good as a Good Book

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "Nothing So Good as a Good Book: Include a favorite book or work of literature." I used a quote; you'll find the source in the end notes if you don't recognize it.
> 
> Warnings: This went in a completely unexpected direction, but that's just the way July rolls sometimes. This was written in a huge rush. You have been warned.

Being the landlady of Sherlock Holmes, I am far more often the recipient of surprises than the giver of them. In fact I can only remember a very few times when I managed to surprise Mr Holmes. The first time was when I agreed to rent the rooms to him. We did not know each other at all well then, but I had been a landlady for some time by that point, and I could see that Mr Holmes was bracing himself for a refusal. I dare say there have been times when I wished I _had_ turned him away, but that’s neither here nor there.

He surprised me a great deal in those early days, what with his clients, and his invalid fellow-lodger, Doctor Watson, and his odd doings at all hours. Gradually I came to know them both better, and the surprises became less surprising and more commonplace happenings, but Mr Holmes never lost his fondness for astonishing people, myself included.

That made his surprise all the more striking when he realized that I knew.

It was several years after he and Doctor Watson had moved into my house. The doctor had improved very much over that time, and went out with Mr Holmes on his cases more often than not. It seemed to do him good, in the main, and the stories he told afterwards enlivened many an evening. But on this particular occasion, the doctor appeared to have overdone things, or perhaps done a mischief to himself, or had a mischief perpetuated upon him. Whatever the case, he and Mr Holmes came in together, with the doctor leaning rather heavily upon Mr Holmes’ arm. They were sufficiently preoccupied that neither one of them noticed me come out from the kitchen just as they reached the stairs.

I couldn’t overhear what they said to one another, but I saw Mr Holmes’ face clearly enough as Doctor Watson turned loose of his arm and started making his way laboriously up those stairs. I saw how he stood there, watching carefully, until the doctor made it safely to the door of their sitting room. I saw his face. I heard his nearly silent sigh. And when he turned around and suddenly saw me, I recognized the moment when he realized that I’d _seen_ , and that I _knew_.

He froze, surprise plain on his face quickly turning to dread. He opened his mouth, undoubtedly to forestall me with some folderol or another, but I spoke first.

“You looked just now like my Uncle Cicero used to do, Mr Holmes,” I said gently. “Particularly when watching Mr Hudson try to climb the stairs when he was unwell.”

His face changed again to surprise mixed with a touch of bewilderment, reminding me even more of my uncle during the extraordinary conversation we’d once had when I was twenty. I’d just refused yet another offer for my hand, and my parents, exasperated, had called in my favorite uncle to ‘reason’ with me. He’s always been fondest of me, and I of him. He’d often claim me and my brothers for weeks at a time in the summer months when I was a child, ostensibly to be his ‘little housekeeper’ while my brothers ran wild, but really because he knew how unhealthy the summer air was where my parents lived. I loved books as much as he did, and so we spent many hours together, reading books and talking about them. I learned a great deal from my uncle’s library. Funnily enough, one of the passages in one of my favorite of his books helped me in that conversation then, just as it came to mind now.

_“Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”_

There were passages enough in my uncle’s books for me to help me recognize what he was, what his preferences were, why he had always remained a bachelor with only male friends and one particularly close companion. There were ancient lines of poetry that explained behavior between specific girl friends at school. There were certainly books that condemned both ways of being, but I only had to look at my uncle, at some friends and teachers, to know that those books were from hands that had no knowledge or sympathy. Those books did not prove anything.

Nowhere, in any book I’ve ever encountered, was there anyone quite like me, who wanted no one and nothing at all, not in any physical way. The closest seemed to be saints and other towering figures of virtue, who only desired God – and I wasn’t like that, either. I wanted friends. I wanted love, in the abstract. I just didn’t want the physical part of it, not any of it.

“I don’t want any man!” I’d told my uncle, crying from sheer frustration.

He went still and peered intently at me. “Little duckling, is there someone you do want, that you cannot have?” It was as delicate a question as could be asked, with nothing but love and caring on his face.

“No! I wish it was something so easy.”

My uncle took my hands in both of his. “Then what is it, dear? You can trust me, you know that. You can tell me anything, and I won’t be shocked, I promise.”

I did know that, and I believed it, or I might never have said what I did. “I would that I loved someone unavailable, or supposedly unsuitable. I thought at first it was that, when other girls swooned over our dancing master, and I just didn’t care, like some of the other girls didn’t care. They only liked each other, like Sappho the poet, but that wasn’t it either. I’m – I’m just not…I can only be myself. I don’t like to be kissed, and I certainly don’t want… I’m not like Mother and Father, and I’m not like Miss Prichard and Miss Olson, and I’m not like you and Mr Hudson.” I think I did shock him then, both by naming the relationship, and by my equivocation of it with my parents. “You’re all happy being with another. You _want_. I’m… I don’t. I’m just not made correctly, I suppose.”

I certainly felt that way then, that there was something wrong with the way I was. Despite all my uncle’s reassurances, I still somewhat feel that way sometimes. For I am unique as far as I can tell. I do not find myself reflected in literature or in my experience with many other people. But one of the advantages of age is perspective, and I’ve had time to grow used to many things, myself among them.

And there was that look: that alarm that changed to bafflement, and something very like relief and wonder. I’d seen it plainly on my uncle’s face then, and I recognized an echo of it on Mr Holmes’ behind the lightning-quick analysis and grey-eyed stare.

“You be certain to look after the doctor and make sure he gets enough rest,” I went on. “It wouldn’t do for him to have a reversal of his health. He’s done so much better since he first came to share rooms with you.”

Mr Holmes seemed somewhat at a loss for words. “Er – yes.”

“And speaking of domestic affairs, I need to speak to you about the servants. I’ve reason to believe that our house-boy might be moving on next quarter-day, and Jenny, the upstairs maid who does your rooms, will be getting married this summer and might not wish to continue in the work. Normally I would simply hire on someone with suitable references, but I’ve seen enough of your clients to know that you sometimes deal in sensitive matters, Mr Holmes, and that you’ve made a few enemies, too. It occurs to me that it’s just possible someone might try to pretend to be a domestic and get hired here in order to spy on you or cause mischief.”

“I… I suppose that is a possibility,” Mr Holmes said, acting a little more like his usual confident self. “Would you care for some assistance in evaluating candidates next quarter-day, Mrs Hudson?”

“That would be most welcome, Mr Holmes. And of course if you should happen upon someone suitable in the course of your cases, please do keep him or her in mind. I feel certain I can trust your judgment on whether someone would be trustworthy.”

“I shall endeavor to provide whatever assistance I can.” He stared at me a moment more, then shook his head, his mouth relaxing into something almost like a smile. “Mrs Hudson, you are being extraordinarily considerate of my circumstances - my work. I do not believe one landlady in a hundred would see things as you do.” He paused, staring at me once again with half-disbelieving, half-astonished intensity. “Thank you.”

I simply nodded and watched as he vanished up the stairs three steps at a time. I doubted he knew quite what to think, at least not just yet. My uncle certainly hadn’t. But it had all worked out in the end.

Yes, I surprised Mr Holmes that day. He never forgot it, and I believe he has always liked me a bit better for the surprise, even beyond everything else.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted July 4, 2019. 
> 
> The quote is from Persuasion by Jane Austen.


End file.
